I collect manuals. I have so many of them, that I'm starting to wonder where on earth I'm supposed to put them all. Somewhere in the back of a closet, I keep all my manuals in three huge boxes, with manuals dating from the early '80s to just a few days ago when I bought a new mouse. However, none of them are as dear to my as my extensive, fully illustrated Dutch manuals for Windows 3.0, which accompanied my parents' first PC in 1990. An enormously detailed manual covering every aspect of Windows 3.0 - with special sleeves for the various floppy disks that held the Windows 3.0 operating system. I still have those original floppies, and they're still fully functional. Last week, the era of Windows 3.x finally came to an end when Microsoft ceased to give out licenses for the operating system.

We still use dos on our touchscreens that control alot of equipment where I work, and they only were put on a couple years ago (all toggle switches before that) and I suspect we will continue using it because its so easy to write the software for it, unlike the proprietary Allen Bradley systems (not that dos isnt, but AB stuff makes microsoft look like OSS) that cost a fortune. Its actually very stable, and best of all runs on our siemens simatic plcs extremely underpowered processors with no issues.